ISPF Edit
Spelling Checker
By Lionel B. Dyck
you ever document your code or procedures using ISPF Edit
(ok—the answer is that we all do and if we do not then we
should)? After coding for hours or days or weeks in some programming language using strange abbreviations, contractions, and other
variations of correct spelling are you able to do a mental reset and actually spell correctly? For some of us the answer to that last question is
no. We need a little assistance in the spelling department, which is why
spelling checkers were invented by programmers—because they needed
to have their spelling checked.
For the mainframe user there have been spelling checkers available
as ISPF Edit commands that used an external program, either Script
(DCF) or SAS, to check the spelling and report the results. These
spelling checkers are great if you have Script or SAS in your shop. The
rest of us had to rely upon a tattered copy of Webster’s that we have
had for years (or in many cases non-tattered but in near mint condition
because we did not use it).
Since May 1, 2004 there is now a free, open source (under the GPL
License), spelling checker for ISPF Edit that comes with a list of over
10,000 words and works fairly well. It will never rival the integrated
spelling checker that you have on your PC based word processor but it
should keep you from looking foolish when you create text on the
mainframe that others will be looking at.
The initial reaction from early users is that they like the tool. In my
own use of it to check some of the documentation that I have included
in some of the packages that I have posted (such as XMITIP) I have
found a few corrections that had not previously been spotted.
This tool is called SPELLC, short for Spell Checker, and is written
entirely in REXX using ISPF and ISPF Edit services to provide a userfriendly interface. This spelling checker was written to be used with two
other packages that can be found on the web site where SPELLC can be
found, specifically the News ISPF Dialog and the XMITIP package (the
ISPF interface). Both of these packages enable the user to create a text file
to either post in a news database or to be used as the text of an electronic
mail message. In both cases, spelling mistakes can be very embarrassing.
DO
FIGURE 1: SPELLC COMMAND
SPELLC is invoked as an ISPF Edit command as it is designed as an
ISPF Edit Macro. The user may provide up to two optional positional
parameters for the starting and the ending records to be checked. There
parameters can be either line numbers or line labels (see FIGURE 1).
Since this tool lets you specify the range of records for spell
checking, it is easy to use for spell checking the comments within
your programs.
Next, the user sees an ISPF popup panel that allows the user to
enter the data set name of a personal dictionary, really a list of
words, which will be added to the public dictionary. The format of
the personal dictionary is that of a sequential data set, or member of
a partitioned data set, consisting of a series of records with words
separated by blanks.
On this popup panel the user may override the starting and ending
line numbers by entering actual line numbers or line labels (see
FIGURE 2).
At this point pressing enter will cause the spell checking process to
begin. During the spell checking another popup panel will be displayed
showing the user some information about the progress of the spell
checking (see FIGURE 3). This panel includes a constantly changing
field containing the word that is being checked. You have to look fast
as this field changes quickly. It displays the current count of invalid
words, the current count of words checked, the current record being
checked and the record number of the last record to be checked. Also
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Technical Support | August 2004
included on this panel are the count of the number of words found in
both the personal and the public dictionaries.
When the spell checking is completed the user will be informed
either that (see FIGURE 4 for an example where all words are valid and
FIGURE 5 for an example with misspelled words):
FIGURE 2: INITIAL PROMPTING PANEL
All words passed verification
The number of misspelled words along with a list of the
misspelled words.
All records with no errors will be hidden so that those records
with misspelled words will be easier to find.
Under each record with a misspelled word will be an ISPF
Edit message line with asterisks under the misspelled word.
Once the spelling check has completed, some words may be incorrectly flagged as misspelled words. To solve this problem for future
spelling checks the user can use SPELLCA command to add the word
to their personal dictionary. This command was written by Russell
Nesbitt and works by entering SPELLCA on the ISPF Edit command
line and then moving the cursor to the word to be added—then pressing the enter key.
If the user does not specify a personal dictionary in the SPELLC
prompting panel, then SPELLCDF (the local customization REXX
Exec) will be allocated on the first use of SPELLCA. In this case,
SPELLCDF must have been updated to define the format for the user’s
personal dictionary data set name.
The following ‘rules’ are used during the spelling check:
1. Each line of text in the ISPF Edit (or View) data set is read from
top to bottom
2. Each line will have the characters :,?()*=;<>[]! translated to blanks
3. Each word (a string of characters without an intervening blank)
is then converted to upper case for checking
4. Words that begin with numbers are not checked
5. The word is tested and if found then checking continues with the
next word, otherwise:
1. Words ending with S, ‘S, and ‘D are checked as if the S, ‘S,
and ‘D are not there.
2. Words with these other characters, 0123456789_-@, are
ignored.
6. A message is inserted after each line with an invalid word
indicating the misspelling on the prior line
7. Upon completion the invalid words are displayed in sorted
sequence at the top of the data set in ISPF message format.
The installation of this tool is easy. First, you need to download the
package from http://www.lbdsoftware.com (look on the ISPF Tools
page for the most current version). The package is distributed in zip
format so you will need to unzip the file on your PC and then upload to
your z/OS system the spellc.xmit file.
The upload should be performed in binary mode and into a data set
with a DCB of RECFM=FB and LRECL=80. The resulting file needs
to be processed using the TSO RECEIVE command (see the read.me
file that is included in the package). This will create a partitioned data
set on your z/OS system.
Within the distribution PDS are the following members of interest:
$DOC
brief documentation on how to install and use SPELLC
Technical Support | August 2004
FIGURE 3: PROGRESS PANEL
FIGURE 4: SAMPLE GOOD RESULTS
CHANGES
EXEC
PANELS
RECEIVE
WBAD
AGOOD
WORDS
a change history of the package
the REXX Exec library in TSO Transmit format
the ISPF Panel library in TSO Transmit format
a REXX exec that can be used to issue the TSO RECEIVE
command on the EXEC and PANELS Members.
a sample member with misspelled words
a sample member with all correctly spelled words
a starting public dictionary of words
To use the RECEIVE member to rebuild the EXEC and PANELS
members the simplest technique is to use ISPF 3.4 to list the distribution PDS and then open the data set using either Browse or Edit. Then
enter EXEC next to the RECEIVE member and follow the prompts.
The next step is to create the public dictionary data set for your
installation. The data set should be allocated using RECFM=VB and
LRECL=84. Then copy the distribution PDS member WORDS into
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this new data set. Make sure that this data set can be accessed in read
mode by all of your intended users.
Once you have done this then you are ready to update the installation
specific information in the SPELCDF REXX Exec. Within this member,
you will define the e-mail address that you want your users to use to
share correctly spelled words that should be added to the public dictionary. Then define the name of the public dictionary. You can also
change the alphabet characters used to validate the first character of a
word, the list of special characters that will be translated to blanks
before a line is processed, and the list of special characters that will be
translated to blanks within a word. The last thing you will define, or set
to null, is a data set name to be used by SPELLCA to create a personal dictionary data set if the user does not specify one in the first
SPELLC popup panel.
At this point you are ready to copy the EXEC and PANELS libraries
created from running the RECEIVE member into libraries that your
users have access to in the TSO LOGON Procs. The EXEC library
should be copied into a library in either the SYSEXEC (preferred) or
SYSPROC concatenation and the PANELS library into a library in the
ISPPLIB concatenation.
Now try it out. In the distribution PDS are members WBAD and
WGOOD so you can see how SPELLC works with two small text files.
Then try it on some of your data sets and when you are ready tell your
users about it.
FIGURE 5: SAMPLE MISSPELLED RESULTS
As the author of this package, I am interested in any suggestions to improve it
as well as any bugs that you find. If you add words to the public dictionary,
please also share those so that others will benefit from those additions.You can
find SPELLC, and many other useful packages, at http://www.lbdsoftware.com.
My e-mail is lionel.b.dyck@kp.org.
©2004 Technical Enterprises, Inc. Reproduction of this document without permission is prohibited.
Technical Support | August 2004